Deterra Royalties Limited (DRR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Deterra Royalties Full Year 2026 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Jason Neal, Interim Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Deterra Royalties Full Year 2026 Results Call. I'm Jason Neal, interim MD and CEO of Deterra and I'm joined today by Jason Clifton, our Chief Financial Officer. As you are aware, I have been a long-standing nonexecutive director and have stepped into the MD and CEO role on an interim basis as a bridge to the next leader of our company. I will add further comments on the CEO search after the financials, but the summary is that we have an active search process underway and fiscal year 2026 has been business as usual, and our team continues to advance various opportunities. It is a pleasure to report a strong half and without further delay, I'm going to hand the call to Jason Clifton to take you through the highlights and important details. I will conclude the call before the Q&A session with some of my own reflections on the year and the strategic direction of the company.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. If you move to Page 3, you'll see we have delivered a strong full year NPAT of AUD 164 million. This has been largely driven, firstly, by record production and sales volume from MAC, partially offset by softer AUD pricing. And secondly, by the first half profit from the sale of non-core precious metals assets that came as part of the Trident acquisition. We announced those sales in August and September last year and have used the AUDI 108 million proceeds received to-date to pay down debt. Thacker Pass continues to derisk. Construction is well underway, and Jason Neal will add more on that for later. We have a very strong balance sheet with net debt at AUD 132 million and are well within all of our banking covenants and target leverage range, and this positions us well to execute on investment opportunities as they arise over time. Moving to Page 4. You'll see revenue from continuing operations is up 6%, driven by the MAC Royalty. After cost, underlying EBITDA was also up 6%. We have a number of non-recurring items that I've called out here. Firstly, the MAC capacity payment. In FY '25, you'll recall, we received a AUD 20 million payment. At South Flank had a significant production increase in that year as it ramped up to nameplate capacity that meant that FY '26 is always going to be lower. And going forward, we don't expect material capacity payments to be received. The second non-recurring items are the revenue and profit from the sale of disposed assets. These were disclosed in the first half, so no change there. And finally, in FY '25, we had the costs associated with the Trident acquisition. Importantly, our financing costs have reduced following net debt reduction from proceeds of asset sales and also from operating cash flows not being paid out as dividends. On the tax row, we called out in the first half that we have a lower effective tax rate this year as we utilize offshore tax losses to offset the tax that would have been payable on the profit on sale of assets. And the dividend for the half is AUD 0.108 per share, which, together with the first half dividend of AUD 0.124 delivers a AUD 0.232 per share fully franked full year dividend and that's consistent with our payout ratio target of 75%. Moving to Page 5. You can see the macro royalties up 7% on FY '25. And sales for the year were a record 140 million dry metric tonnes, which were up 9%. The U.S. dollar realized price of USD 92 million was also up in FY '25, but was offset by the FX rate. So the Aussie dollar realized price is down 2% on FY '25. Moving to Page 6. Our operating cost of AUD 14.1 million for the year. Within that number includes one-off costs of $1 million associated with the CEO transition that I called out at the first half. Offsetting that has been a lower head count in FY '26, which reflects a restructuring of our teams both here in the Perth office and our London offices as well. There were some other small increases in other costs from our Denver office and a small increase in external business development activity costs. On Page 7 is the sale of non-core precious metals assets as presented at the first half. These generated AUD 108 million in cash proceeds, which was used to reduce debt. There is a further AUD 13 million cash payment due coming to Deterra in August 2026, and that is the deferred component of the La Preciosa sale's. That won't hit the P&L as we book the profit from that sale in this period. Page 8 shows the strength of our balance sheet. Net debt is AUD 132 million at 30 June 26, and we have AUD 357 million undrawn capacity. Across our facilities, our average margin is 1.3%, and all-in post-tax cost of debt is 3.8%. That's a real distinct competitive advantage when you look across the royalty industry. Page 9 outlines our capital management framework. We have a very strong balance sheet, and this is providing us a range of options to find out any potential new value-adding investment. We maintained a 75% payout ratio, which is striking the right balance between shareholder returns, balance sheet strength, and investment optionality. And finally, Page 10 provides a reconciliation of noncash items and underlying NPAT. I won't cover that here, but happy to take questions later. With that, Jason Neal, I'll pass back to you.

I mentioned at the half year results that I expected we would have appointed our next Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer before today. The extended timing of this process is a reflection of the dedication of our Board to get the right leader in the seat. We have several live candidates that we continue to work through, but we'll not promise the timing for such appointment. Those of you who have heard me speak about the global royalty industry, although that I view the Australian acceptance of new royalties and streams as an important financing tool as lagging experience in North America by decade or so. So it is great to see in the last 6 months, several key royalty and streaming transactions within the Australian market by leaders in the industry, Franco-Nevada and Wheaton Precious. While these are precious little transactions, they have certainly helped build awareness of royalties and streaming as financing tools to support growth here in Australia as well as Australian companies operating internationally. We have certainly seen an increase in dialogue with investment companies as -- on future opportunities. FY '26 has been another great period for our mining area, C Royalty. The MAC royalty supports our dividend to shareholders, which is fully franked and targeted to be 75% of net profits after tax. We are a growth-focused company, but how MAC supports that growth has not thus far been buying redeploying significant cash flows and new acquisitions. What MAC has provided is the ability to access bank debt capital and effectively investment-grade rates, which is a huge advantage for a small company. Our after-tax borrowing rate is 3.8% in FY '26. We continue to be very happy with our acquisition of Trident which we bought an attractive multiple in part because the shares were illiquid trading on the U.K. market.. The Trident acquisition continues to deliver for Deterra. During FY '26, this has been demonstrated by the USD 82 million sale of gold offtakes and other non-core assets that came with Trident PLC offtakes aren't really royalties and they did not fit our portfolio. So we're always tagging these for disposal. We generated AUD 8.4 million in profits on that sale. Importantly, this means that the cost of acquiring Thacker Pass, the lithium royalty in Nevada, which is the primary target of the Trident, was USD 106 million after factoring the disposals, but retaining some important smaller development and exploration royalties. Thacker Pass has been a perfect example of how a royalty can mature and add value. During FY '26 Lithium Americas, the operator of Thacker Pass has drawn USD 1.2 billion of the USD 2.2 billion U.S. Department of Energy loan. The DOE has taken 5% equity rights in Lithium Americas and 5% in the Lithium Americas General-General Motors joint venture that owns the project. Detailed engineering design surpassed 95% and over 70% of procurement is complete. On General Motors, they are not only a partner of the joint venture, having contributed USD 945 million, but also having offtake arrangements in place for lithium production. All this is a significant endorsement. That progress has been made during a period where the lithium price had doubled and follows on from the 2025 technical report that updated the mine life to 85 years and outlined expansions to 160,000 tons per annum production rate, both of which are double the assumptions we had at the acquisition. So we are very much looking forward to first production which Lithium Americas continues to project at the end of calendar 2027. This is a good point to reflect on our capital allocation, which can be summarized as continuing to pay a peer-leading dividend in the royalty and streaming sector and having completed a well-timed acquisition and subsequent asset rationalization to add new core assets and now we're having available capital to deploy in future growth. The USD 82 million proceeds from our asset sales were largely applied to debt repayment. As of June 30, 2026, our drawn debt is now AUD 143 million. So today, we have AUD 357 million of undrawn debt in a position to make further acquisitions opportunistically. We have also amended our dividend reinvestment plan to include a discount. The rationale behind this is to allow our shareholders to efficiently subscribe for additional shares with the cash dividend they receive. The discount, which is in line with other Australian companies which provide this opportunity should increase the uptake on the DRP, and this capital is in turn invested in the growth of our business. Initially, cash received pays down our drawn debt facilities and increases the liquidity available for acquisitions. As I opened my remarks, it is business as usual while we continue to search for our next CEO who will be to add to the quality of our financial -- our foundational MAC asset and build significant shareholder value through growth. We are conscious that so far, we have delivered shareholders with a very good return through dividends but have not provided a return through capital gains as our share price is not that different than it was at the 2020 IPO. The royalty and streaming sector, which is dominated by North American companies, typically trades at stronger multiples than ourselves and has provided an outstanding shareholder experience overall and generated significant returns greater than the underlying commodity prices. That multiple is earned through growing and diversifying the royalty and streaming portfolio through deploying capital to new attractive assets, both in consolidating existing royalties and streams and informing part of the funding base for the mine development. That is the potential and the objective of this company, and I look forward to returning to a nonexecutive role in due course and supporting our next CEO.

[Operator Instructions] We will now go ahead to take our first question. And this question comes from the line of Glyn Lawcock from Barrenjoey.

I just wanted to ask a little bit about like it's been 6 months, and there's been no real activity. You obviously had a lot come through the door, but nothing that you've actioned. If the net debt continues to come down at the rate it is, do you think you've returned to the 100% payout as well once you get to sort of a net cash position?

I don't think so, no. We have a lot of opportunities that we're looking at of various sizes. And the expectation is that we'll be able to deploy capital if we got close to net debt 0, I think that we'd be looking at the pipeline that we've got in front of us, and we would maintain it at 75% payout ratio.